Thomas Beckwith
is a staff writer for The Millions and an MFA candidate at Johns Hopkins. Prior to coming to Baltimore, he studied literature and worked in IT while living in Dublin, Ireland. You can find him on Twitter at @tdbeckwith.

The Washington Post offers a long profile of the still underappreciated Edward P. Jones. We learn he hasn't put a word of fiction to paper in four years but has been writing in his head. "'I write a lot in my head,' he says. 'I've never been driven to write things down.'" (via @keelinmc)

The more you know! In Victorian times, sitting for a photograph could last hours due to primitive camera technology and the need for long, long exposures. This, predictably, didn’t jibe with kids, and so parents had to adopt an ingenious workaround: disguising themselves in the picture so they could physically restrain the youngsters. (Don’t miss Part 2, either.)

Every so often, a piece comes along that rends the fragile mind, employing a devil’s portion of mundane details to lay bare the inescapable futility of all human endeavor. This is the only rational way to describe this piece at The Awl, which takes the form of a conversation between Karl Ove Knausgaard and True Detective’sNic Pizzolatto.

The Paris Review’s interview with Hungarian author (and recent retiree) Imre Kertész is up on their website now, and to celebrate the occasion the magazine is offering a $10 discount on subscriptions. The promo code is good all week long.

You may have heard that Pulitzer laureate Oscar Hijuelospassed away on Sunday at the age of 62. Hijuelos, who won the prize in 1990 for his novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, broke ground as the first Latino author to take home the prestigious award. On NPR, David Greenetalks with Columbia professor Gustavo Perez Firmat about the author’s legacy. (Related: Thea Limon people of color and American writing.)

Over at Melville House, editor Ellie Robbins has discovered an App that might help you finish your novel: it involves your Facebook friends, one compromising picture, and some, um, lighthearted blackmail.